More than 40 business owners have signed onto a letter urging the Downtown Long Beach Alliance to plan more events around the city’s urban core in the hopes of enticing more customers, tourists and diners.
They say the DTLB Alliance, funded mostly by fees the city levies on Downtown as part of two local business improvement districts, used to plan more events before the COVID-19 pandemic brought them to an abrupt halt.
The letter, sent to the Alliance’s executive committee this month, says some events have returned, but not as frequently or successfully as before.
The business owners asked the nonprofit to reassess its priorities and for “funds to be reallocated to meet the moment.”
More community-focused events held at regular intervals, they said, could help spur economic revival in the Downtown area, where store and restaurant owners say they have struggled since the pandemic chased away office workers and disrupted tourism.
“We appreciated the advocacy from business owners at our last executive committee meeting, and folks should know we agree with the push for more events,” DTLB Alliance CEO Austin Metoyer said in a statement.
The Alliance is still developing its budget for next fiscal year, and officials say they’re trying to direct more money toward events. A final draft will be presented to its executive committee in August. The Alliance’s total budget last year was around $6 million.
Clay Wood, who has owned a pottery studio in Downtown’s East Village neighborhood for the past 15 years, wrote the letter requesting more events. He said change is needed to “address Downtown’s wounds.”
In the past, the DTLB Alliance held more events to help brick-and-mortar businesses attract new and repeat customers, but events that were stunted during the pandemic have not returned often enough to aid the small businesses, Wood said.
In fiscal year 2016-17, the DTLB Alliance had a special events budget of roughly $1 million, according to the nonprofit. About $600,000 of that budget was made up from sponsorships, ticket sales and beer sales for larger events that the Alliance held.
Its current events budget is $478,000, according to DTLB Alliance. Over the past 12 months, the Alliance funded 14 events.
Part of the letter asked the organization to “bring back nostalgic events such as Buskerfest, which was a Downtown festival last held in 2019 that consisted of up-and-coming Long Beach musicians playing acoustic sets on various stages.
Attendees were given “wooden tokens” as a way to vote for their favorite act, Wood said. The winning band received a $2,500 prize package.
Maggie Stoll, owner of the Burke Mercantile boutique, opened her store on First Street a few months after Buskerfest.
At the end of May, she is closing her brick-and-mortar store and switching all sales to online, she said.
It’s a decision she delayed for at least the last two years, Stoll said. She held on through the pandemic and the severe effects it had on Downtown, but her online numbers have continued to outpace her in-store sales.
Her first year on the street, 2019, she saw her biggest sales numbers, Stoll said.
In 2022, in-store business started to pick up again, but around the same time, it was a blow when the DTLB Alliance’s East Village Art and Design Walk went from a monthly event to four times per year, according to Stoll.
“We need to connect our new residents to our Downtown,” Kimberly Latham, owner of the boutique Anneise, told the DTLB Alliance’s executive committee at its May 1 meeting. “We have more new buildings and residents than we’ve ever had, and yet we have lower foot traffic.”
Even when major events like the Long Beach Grand Prix increase foot traffic, the influx of attendees has not always translated to sales for business owners, said Lauren Pretty, co-owner of Olive & Rose restaurant in the renovated City Center Hotel.
This year’s race weekend drew nearly 200,000 people to Downtown Long Beach in April, but Olive & Rose was “just dead, it was so slow,” Pretty said.
She signed the letter because she would like to see more events held during race weekend to direct visitors toward small businesses near the Grand Prix, Pretty said.
Stoll would also like to see the DTLB Alliance work with the hotels to help direct guests where to eat and shop locally, Stoll said.
Last week, a customer staying at a hotel down the street for a convention told Stoll she was directed to Shoreline Village and Pine Avenue when she asked where to find boutique stores, Stoll said.
After walking around for a few hours, discouraged at not finding any boutiques, the customer stumbled upon Stoll’s store down the street from the hotel, Stoll said.
“What makes Long Beach special, especially our Downtown, is that we still are not full of big corporate chains,” Stoll said. “We are still full of small businesses, micro businesses and locally owned business, and that’s what people love that are Downtown. But we need support to keep it that way.”